FAO.org

After sketching the mutual links between economic growth, agriculture, technology, poverty reduction and external factors, this paper analyses the implications of recent international price shocks on welfare and growth, notably energy and agricultural products, for Burkina Faso, a less industrialised, low-income, food-deficit, net oil-importing country. The socio-economic impacts of the above-mentioned external shocks are analysed by means of a Computable General Equilibrium model (CGE).

The paper also discusses the extent to which technological changes in agriculture, specifically the introduction of “Good Agricultural Practices” (GAP) towards “conservation agriculture”, could mitigate the welfare and growth losses derived by international price shocks. 

Additionally, it is shown that the technological changes explored in this paper, in spite of their significant impacts on agricultural productivity, by no means countervail the negative welfare and growth losses brought by international price shocks.

Policy implications for poverty reduction and food security are that, in Burkina Faso, there is an urgent focus on energy issues by all means, including the adoption of appropriate agricultural technologies. These findings are likely to apply to other less-industrialised energy-importing countries with similar socio-economic structure.

For more information, see also:

• Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: Ranking Income Distributions with Generalised Lorenz Curves. EASYPol Series 002
• Impacts of Policies on Poverty. The Definition of Poverty. EASYPol Series 004

This paper is part of the FAO Policy series: EASYPol-Resources for policy making (in agriculture, rural development and food security). You can find other EASYPol series' resources in the Resources section of this website, typing "EASYPol" in the free text search.